Tel­cos to of­fer on­line so­lu­tions to SIM card reg­is­tra­tion

MYAN­MAR’S telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firms are step­ping up ef­forts to help cus­tomers regis­ter their SIM cards by next year’s dead­line to avoid hav­ing their cards blocked.

The Min­istry of Trans­port and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions an­nounced last month that start­ing on March 31, 2017, all un­reg­is­tered SIM cards will be blocked.

The three tel­cos are al­ready of­fer­ing reg­is­tra­tion in their branded stores. Te­lenor users can also al­ready regis­ter by call­ing a Te­lenor call cen­tre, and the Nor­we­gian firm is plan­ning to launch an on­line reg­is­tra­tion ser­vice for cus­tomers in Oc­to­ber, CEO Lars Erik Tell­mann told The Myan­mar Times on Septem­ber 16.

Ri­val firm Oore­doo is plan­ning to launch a ded­i­cated phone line for reg­is­tra­tion by the end of Oc­to­ber, and in­tro­duce a SIM card reg­is­tra­tion fea­ture on its My Oore­doo mo­bile app, said CEO Rene Meza on Septem­ber 16.

Cus­tomers of state-owned MPT, mean­while, can regis­ter at one of al­most 300 MPT stores across the coun­try.

“MPT shops are reg­is­ter­ing about 100 SIM cards daily but I can’t give an ex­act fig­ure,” said an of­fi­cial from MPT who asked to re­main anony­mous.

U Za­yar Kyaw Soe, an MPT user in Yan­gon, said he thought cus­tomers would be re­luc­tant to go through the has­sle of reg­is­ter­ing at a store. “Op­er­a­tors should be of­fer­ing on­line reg­is­tra­tion,” he said.

The of­fi­cial could not com­ment on whether MPT would pro­vide on­line reg­is­tra­tion.

MPT has over 20 mil­lion cus­tomers. Te­lenor 17 mil­lion and Oore­doo over 8 mil­lion. The three tel­cos were un­able to give ex­act fig­ures on how many reg­is­tered SIM cards each firm has.

MIL­LION 45 The com­bined num­ber of cus­tomers the ma­jor tel­cos say they have reg­is­tered